KOSTA VAXEVANIS hates being the centre of attention. On Thursday moments before taking the stand in one of the most sensational trials to grip Greece in modern times, the journalist said he was not in the business of making news. "My job is simply to tell the news and tell it straight," he averred. "My job is to tell the truth."

Truth in the case of Vaxevanis has been a rollercoaster that has catapulted the 46-year-old from relative obscurity to global stardom in a matter of days. But, after a hearing that lasted almost 12 hours – with a three-member panel of judges sitting stony-faced throughout, he was vindicated: the court found him not guilty of breaking data privacy laws by publishing the names in Hot Doc, the weekly magazine he edits, of some 2059 Greeks believed to have bank accounts in Switzerland.

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations," Vaxevanis said, citing George Orwell, before observers packed into the crammed courtroom broke into applause. "As such it was my duty to reveal this list."

Even before Thursday's court drama – proceedings that veered from comic to tragic as handcuffed Asian migrants looked on in bewilderment – the nation was up in arms over the list.

In the two years since it had been handed to Greek authorities by the IMF's chief Christine Lagarde, the infamous tally of suspected tax evaders had caught the popular imagination. With tax avoidance widely blamed for the debt-stricken country's inability to balance the books, the failure of successive governments to act on the list and crack down on tax evaders had raised suspicions that corrupt vested interests ran to the top of society.

"It is quite clear the political system did everything not to publish this list," said Vaxevanis, who had faced up to two years in jail and a €30,000 fine (£24,000) if convicted.

"If you look at the names, or the offshore companies linked to certain individuals, you see that these are all friends of those in power. Phoney lists had also begun to circulate. It was time for the truth," he told the Guardian during a recess.

Tax evasion rampant
"We live in a country where, on the one hand, tax evasion is rampant and, on the other, people are eating out of rubbish trucks because of salary cuts, because they can't make ends meet."

Three years after Europe's worst crisis in decades erupted in Athens, Vaxevanis has emerged as an unwitting crusader – a defender of truth in an environment ever more electrified by the perceived menaces of malfeasance and mendacity.

Five days after a public prosecutor ordered his arrest – dispatching special agents to seize the journalist in a nation whose justice system has almost never moved with such alacrity – there are few who do not agree that his trial has been "politically motivated". For defence witnesses such as the popular singer Dimitra Galani, bringing Vaxevanis before the court was proof that even press freedom was now at risk in the birthplace of democracy. "The whole thing is absurd, the theatre of the absurd. Greeks really don't know what to think anymore," she said.

For veteran leftists such as Nikos Kostantopouloulos, one of the reporter's three lawyers, the affair was further evidence that the country at the centre of the continent's debt drama was falling down a very slippery slope. "We have a schizophrenic situation where, on the one hand, a journalist is being penalised for revealing a document in the interests of informing public opinion and, on the other, the parliament itself is now saying the handling of the list should be investigated."

From the outset, said Kostantopouloulos, a former leftist politician, the case had defied the principles of justice.

"Right down to the way the prosecutor so hastily issued the charge sheet without even bothering to stamp it, it has been handled very badly," he said. "Furthermore, none of those on the list have even filed a complaint about privacy violation."

With ordinary Greeks hammered by a fifth year of recession, the case has ignited widespread fury. The list, reprinted on Monday by the leading daily Ta Nea, includes politicians, businessmen, shipping magnates, doctors, lawyers – a far cry from those who have borne the brunt of relentless austerity measures on the margins of society.

'Stashing their loot'
"While we have been paying our taxes, some out there have been stashing their loot away in Switzerland, not being taxed at all," said Petros Hadzopoulos, a retiree, who had come to the court to get a glance of the journalist he called "his new, best hero". Hot Doc, which normally has a circulation of about 25,000, sold 100,000 last week.

As Athens teeters once again on the brink of bankruptcy – its public coffers set to run dry in less than a month – Vaxevanis's arrest has highlighted the pitfalls of press freedom in a nation where this week alone two anchors on state television were also fired for publicly "undermining" a minister.

The presenters' "crime" had been to question the failure of the public order minister Nikos Dendias to act on a threat to sue the Guardian for publishing a story alleging police torture of protesters that he said had "defamed Greek democracy".

For those packed into the chamber it was clear that in the birthplace of freedom, democracy itself was at stake. Yesterday's often shambolic proceedings, which frequently saw the panel's presiding female magistrate thumping the bench as she demanded "silence" under an icon of Jesus Christ, included court-appointed interpreters being unable to translate with one confusing friend for French and absurd with illegal.

"I am very pained to have to be here in Greece the mother of democracy explaining the obvious," said Jim Boumela, who, as president of the International Federation of Journalists, flew in from London to testify at the trial.

"This is what I have to do in countries like Uganda," he said. "Kostas should be applauded for what he has done. It's a very worrying turn that journalists are being suppressed in Greece – and I think we are going to see more of it."

BRITISH REVENUE OFFICIALS SCOUR LISTS
More than 500 individuals on the so-called "Lagarde list" of suspected tax evaders with secret bank accounts in Switzerland have been, or are currently, under investigation by UK Revenue and Customs for serious fraud.

Tax investigators are still working their way through the 6000 names on the list, two and a half years after it was handed over to the UK by then French Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde, who also passed versions to other European members states, including Greece.

While HMRC said its handling of the data was "a major success" and expected to recover hundreds of millions of unpaid taxes, only one person has been successfully prosecuted so far. The long-standing HMRC policy of reaching settlements and imposing penalties mean that the vast majority of those on the list are unlikely to be prosecuted or named as a result. - Ben Quinn

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

An Al Jazeera news feed on the strike at Freeport mine in West Papua in October 2011 backgrounding the issues. Note that the clip is reported through a Jakarta "prism" rather than a Papuan one.

CONGRATULATIONS to Auckland writer/photographer Karen Abplanalp who has won the Bruce Jesson Foundation’s $1000 Emerging Journalist Award for an outstanding investigation published in Metro magazine in December 2011 about the NZ Superannuation Fund’s investment in the Freeport mine at Grasberg in West Papua. She was awarded the prize last night by foundation chair Professor Jane Kelsey.

The article, “Blood Money”, asked how the Super Fund could justify investing in a project, owned by US-based mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, that depended on regular payments to the Indonesian military and other unethical practices. At least three striking Grasberg miners were shot dead by police in October 2011. (The above Al Jazeera video news news clip during the strike reported three were shot). The judges' statement said:

The Super Fund defended its investment to Abplanalp, arguing that it had a policy of “engagement” with the mining company to improve its ethical practices.But on September 26 this year the Super Fund announced that it had sold its $1.28 million investment in Freeport McMoRan because of “breaches of human rights standards by security forces around the Grasberg mine, and concerns over requirements for direct payments to government security forces”.It also sold much smaller investments in three other companies “for severe breaches of the fund’s responsible investment standards where engagement was unlikely to be effective”.The convenor of the Jesson Foundation’s journalism awards subcommittee, Camille Guy, said Karen Abplanalp’s article was a stunning exemplar of the crucial role of journalism in all countries of holding authority to account.

The award-winning Metro article.

“If Karen hadn’t investigated the true conditions behind the profits coming out of the Grasberg mine, it is unlikely that more than a handful of New Zealanders would have been aware of what their public pension fund was supporting. NZ Super Fund managers themselves probably did not know the full truth,” Guy said.“Karen Abplanalp and Metro magazine have performed an important public service in bringing these conditions to light, and I am delighted that the Super Fund has now pulled out of this investment.”The top Bruce Jesson journalism prize of $4000 for investigative journalism went to Christchurch journalist Rebecca Macfie for a planned book about the Pike River mine disaster.Macfie, the South Island correspondent for The Listener, has covered the Pike River story ever since 29 miners died on 19 November 2010 in New Zealand’s worst mining disaster in almost a century.

The Jesson journalism prizes, set up after the death of journalist Bruce Jesson in 1999 to support investigative journalism in New Zealand, will contribute $4000 towards Macfie’s costs of researching and writing an in-depth book on the tragedy for Wellington publisher Awa Press.Macfie will take leave without pay from the Listener to write the book, which will be published next year.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

BEHIND THE SHROUD, Selwyn Manning's long awaited documentary about "intelligence, espionage and counter-terrorism", is now available on DVD and public screenings are being planned. The Pacific Media Centre plans a showing early next year. The 105min documentary film is investigative, participatory, independent and "gritty in style".

It examines the Ahmed Zaoui case. The film analyses why in 2007, after years of the New Zealand government stating the refugee Algerian theologian and teacher to be a risk to the nation's security, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Justice Paul Neazor, found in Zaoui's favour and set him free.

As New Zealand filmmaker and journalist Manning says, the documentary "unearths information that has been cloaked in secrecy". The research and preliminary version of the documentary was produced while the filmmaker was completing his Masters in Communication Studies at in collaboration with the Pacific Media Centre at AUT University. It also provides insights into French intelligence policy and the Pacific. Manning is lead co-author of the book I Almost Forgot About the Moon about the Zaoui case:

Behind The Shroud takes the viewer on a journey into that shadowy world of spies and espionage, and resolves the mystery of the Zaoui case through interviews with key players in the great game, including two secret witnesses who each testified at the Inspector-General's hearings into the Zaoui case in Auckland in 2007.

The two secret witnesses are: Lieutenant Colonel Mohamed Samraoui, the Algerian regime's former head of intelligence and counter-espionage based in north Europe; and Professor George Joffe, an academic from Oxford and Cambridge universities - a renowned expert on north Africa affairs. Both men now speak publicly for the first time about how and why Zaoui was framed by the Algerian regime.

Mohamed Samraoui is a protagonist of sorts and is presented as the officer tasked by his superiors to create a cloak of disinformation around Zaoui. He outlines why as an officer of the DRS (Algeria's secret intelligence service) he "disempowered" Zaoui and other members of Algeria's opposition political parties so as to render them ineffective threats to the military regime.Behind The Shroud also presents other experts who offer exclusive accounts, each giving a unique view on how the Zaoui case has become a precedence-setting case-study into whether it is proper for governments to rely on intelligence information in judicial process and practice.

These experts include: Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wilkie, a former Australian Defence intelligence officer and intelligence adviser to former prime minister John Howard; Dr Paul Buchanan, a former security analyst to United States intelligence/security agencies;Superintendent Gerry Cuneen, New Zealand Police's former head of its criminal intelligence unit; Matt Robson, former associate minister of foreign affairs; and others.

Their testimony confronts unanswered questions that have lingered since late 2007 and explains why the New Zealand government suddenly set Zaoui free, inviting Zaoui and his family to enjoy their liberty as legitimate refugees in New Zealand.

The documentary concludes with a thought-provoking critique of New Zealand's intelligence apparatus and paves the way for a debate into how New Zealand can move to ensure the Ahmed Zaoui case is not repeated.

Behind The Shroud is being distributed for selected film festival release.

Monday, October 29, 2012

THIS MUST go down as the rugby union try of the year, surely. France winger Yoann Huget, grabbed this remarkable score on March 28 in the French Top 14 championship playing for Bayonne away against Montpellier. After a brilliant intercept, he ducked and weaved his way almost the length of the field, kicked ahead, smothered the last defender - who had the ball - regathered and then scored. Magnifique! In spite of this, his team Bayonne lost against Montpellier 26-37. Huget is now playing for French champions Toulouse.

Friday, October 26, 2012

IN HIS recent AUT University inaugural professorial about global media truth, transparency and accountability, David Robie condemned the new so-called e-Martial Law in the Philippines, saying it was a warning for the Pacific.

“The most disturbing trend in the digital age is electronic martial law - a draft new law in the Philippines which criminalises e-libel in an extreme action to protect privacy,” he said.

“The Supreme Court has ruled to temporarily suspend this law. But what happens next? Will it be ruled unconstitutional or will the politicians prevail?

“This Cybercrime Prevention Act 2012 is like something out of the Tom Cruise futuristic movie Minority Report. An offender can be imprisoned for up to 12 years without parole and the law is clearly a violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“And truth is not recognised as a defence.

“It would be disastrous if any Pacific country, such as Fiji, wanted to do a copycat law and gag cyberspace.”

Professor Robie highlighted the fact that in the Philippines at least 165 journalists have been murdered since 1986 – 32 of them in the Ampatuan massacre in Mindanao in 2009, the world’s worst single killing of journalists.

Three years later nobody has been convicted for these atrocities.

“The Philippines is a far more dangerous place for the media under democracy than it was under the Marcos dictatorship,” Professor Robie said. “There is a culture of impunity.”

In a joint statement by independent digital and online media, communications and journalism schools and media people in the Philippines, a strong attack has been made on the “cyberspace outrage”.

As outrage against the Cybercrime Prevention Act 2012 continues to snowball and create unprecedented unity and defiance among netizens, the Aquino administration has not backed down in its resolve to implement a clearly draconian measure designed to curtail our most basic civil liberties—the right to freedom of expression, of speech, and of the press.

As alternative media practitioners, filmmakers, bloggers, and artists who maximise the new media to bring to the public information, opinion and analysis, as well as works of art that serve to illuminate social conditions and present ideas for social change, we believe that the government’s repression of the medium is the message. With the Cybercrime Act, the government wants to ensure that no avenue for expression exists that is free from control by the rich and powerful elite.

The existing law on libel has long been used by powerful public figures mostly to harass and prosecute journalists for doing their job. Instead of decriminalising libel as urged by international human rights and media institutions, the government has even increased penalties. Worse, it now considers each and every citizen who uses Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as potential criminals.

With the rise of new media, ordinary citizens have been given the extraordinary power to reach large audiences, a power that has previously been the monopoly of the government and corporate media. The new media has been the recourse of citizens who see, report, and interpret social realities that traditional institutions ignore, hide or obliterate.

Citizens have long been marginalised from discourse on national issues through the agenda-setting powers of the government and corporate media. Through the new media, citizens have the opportunity to counter this marginalisation—to give voice to the poor and oppressed, to gain an audience without the need for huge capitalization, to criticise freely and creatively.

We believe that the Cybercrime Law is primarily a tool that exploits the rise of the new media and the use of ICT to suppress dissent and spy on citizens. The way the law is being defended by those who crafted it, and especially by the President who signed it, reveals that they enjoy, and will use to their own interest, the immense powers that the Cybercrime Law has given the government, such as the ability to take down websites, undertake surveillance, and seize electronic data.

Abuses that will surely arise from such powers will undermine any gains that this law claims to have against “cybercrimes.” For instance, online child pornography and sex trafficking should be addressed by the strict implementation and strengthening of existing laws to reflect the developments in ICT.

It is still debatable if hacking and cracking, spamming, online piracy, and cyberbullying are indeed crimes or if they can be covered under a single piece of legislation. What is clear is that these “cybercrimes” will not be addressed by a law makes expressing oneself online punishable by a jail term, or one that assumes that authorities can dip their hands into private electronic communication.

In other words, a law that throws us back to the dark ages won’t protect our women and children, nor our personal identities and safety. On the contrary, it makes every citizen using ICT vulnerable to abuse by the biggest band of criminals: a government that is corrupt, loathes criticism (as can be judged by President Aquino’s reaction to the online phenomenon ‘Noynoying’), and uses all of its resources to crush dissent.

Even the US government—the footsteps of which the government only follows—did not confer such broad powers unto itself when it attempted, but failed, to pass its Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act.

However, the Cybercrime Law probably pleases the US government, as it strengthens their existing network of surveillance in the country, and boosts the counter-insurgency programme Oplan Bayanihan. The said law also pleases local and foreign big businesses that operate in utter secrecy in this country, further shielding them from public accountability and oversight while penalising those who use ICT to expose wrongdoing and abuses in the private and public sectors.

For e-martial law only reflects the de facto martial law already in place. Under Oplan Bayanihan, more than 100 citizens have been killed for their advocacies, forever silenced by bullets. More than 350 are imprisoned for their political beliefs. The Cybercrime Law makes it even easier to slap dissidents with trumped-up charges and send them to jail. After all, it now takes so little to be considered a cybercriminal.

Repression and lack of freedom is a daily reality for millions of Filipinos in the militarised countryside, violently demolished urban poor communities, and highly controlled workplaces and schools. Now it has become a daily reality as well for netizens who seek comfort in the freedom, however limited, of the new media.

As poverty, exploitation, and repression worsen, the duty to speak up and express ourselves through new media is more necessary than ever. As we begin to feel the grip of Aquino’s iron fist rule, it becomes more urgent to struggle to break free through actions both online and offline. E-martial law has been declared, and as those who fought the Marcos dictatorship taught us, the only way to end it is to start defying it.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

JAKARTA GLOBE stringer and SuaraPapua.com reporter Oktovianus Pogau was choked and beaten by Indonesian police as he attempted to report on a West Papuan protest.

Indonesian police opened fire on protesters in Manokwari, West Papua, shooting two and wounding three others — including a Jakarta Globe contributor — in the latest crackdown on pro-independence groups in the restive Melanesian province, reported Pacific Scoop.

The independent West PapuaMedia reported four people had been shot. Indonesian police denied the shootings, which were graphically videotaped by Metro TV.

Tuesday morning’s West Papua National Committee-sponsored (KNPB) rally began near the State University of Papua (Unipa) in Manokwari, said human rights activist Markus Haluk.

About 300 protesters attempted to march to nearby Borarsi field when police and the Indonesian Military (TNI) blocked their path.

Pogau was videotaping the scene when he was approached by a plainclothes officer and told to leave, according to the Jakarta Globe. When he refused a second officer attacked him from behind.

'Choked my neck'
“[A] policeman in a uniform came and choked my neck while he threatened me and told me to leave the location,” Pogau said.

“I tried to escape and told him that I’m a journalist… but [another] policeman punched me in the face.”

Pogau was pulled from the scene by fellow journalists. He showed the officers his press credentials before the second attack took place.

It was the second assault on journalists in Indonesia in the past week. On October 16, members of the TNI attacked five journalists reporting on a downed military aircraft in Penkanbaru, Riau.

Riau Pos photographer Didik Herwanto was beaten and choked by an officer with the Indonesian Air Force in a widely spread video.

The attack sparked widespread condemnation in Indonesia. Lt. Col. Robert Simanjuntak later apologised.

Pogau is the second Jakarta Globe contributor to be injured on the job while reporting in Papua. Last year, long-time writer Banjir Ambarita was stabbed in Jayapura after reporting on allegations of sexual abuse of female inmates by officers in a Jayapura police detention centre.

Ambarita survived the attack but said the stabbing left him “deeply traumatised” and wary of reporting on government abuse.

In 2011, two journalists working in Papua were killed, according to the Pacific Media Freedom 2011: A status report by the Pacific Media Centre. Eight were kidnapped and 18 others attacked during the course of their work.

Foreign media are banned from reporting in Papua without a special permit. In 2011, only three foreign media outlets were granted approval.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

The logo for the Macmillan Brown Centrefor Pacific Studies-organised conference.

MILITARISM has always been part of Fijian society and the country needs to find a “corporate” bridge between its civil and military based sectors, believes the man who sparked off the modern day coup culture more than 25 years ago.

Sitiveni Rabuka, then a lieutenant-colonel and third-ranked military commander in the Republic of Fiji military Force (RFMF), led the first two of four coups in 1987. The other coups followed in 2000 and 2006.

Former Fiji coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka speaks at the Democracy in the
Pacific conference at the University of Canterbury on Friday. Photo: David Robie/PMC

Rabuka, later an elected prime minister, was giving his views on “democracy” as keynote speaker on Friday in a Pacific-wide conference hosted by Canterbury University’s Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies.

“Militarism has always been a part of Fiji culture,” he said. “Militarism has always been a way of thinking.”

The military traditionally believed that they were the final guarantors of the security of the Fijian people.

“Unfortunately, I broke the democracy way and I stand accused,” Rabuka said, adding that he hoped for better relations with the military in future.

‘Corporate’ committee
He said what was needed was a “corporate” style special committee consulting between the military and the civilian government after the hoped for return to democracy in 2014.

“This would keep tabs on civil-military relations to prevent them breaking down again.”

But he said he believed that the return to democracy in Fiji rested on a fragile election plan that may not eventuate.

If elections did not go ahead, regime Prime Minister and 2006 coup leader Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama would remain in power.

So far, Bainimarama had made no move to establish a new political party, join an existing party or distance himself from the military.

Talking about traditional tribal rivalries and earlier military traditions leading to United Nations peacekeeping duties and politicisation of the army, Rabuka several times cited the famous Battle of Marathon in 490BC when a smaller Athenian army defeated the Persian invading force.

A runner sped to Athens to break the news, declaring: “We have won!”

‘Forgiveness’ process
He said a truth and conciliation “forgiveness” process involving chiefly protocols of “vakaturaga” of the iTaukei culture would contribute to a lasting resolution of Fiji’s problems.

During a plenary session later in the day, Rabuka admitted that he had initially thought the invitation for him to speak at the democracy conference was "a joke”.

“Fiji has had an army destroyer of democracy and a navy destroyer of democracy [Bainimarama] and now I thought they wanted to hear an army destroyer of democracy.”

In a reply to a question about the state of the press in Fiji, Rabuka replied there was a "selective" freeing up of news media debate: "My submission to the Constitution Commission hasn't been reported, for example."

Conflict resolution
"Topics included alternative governance for conflict resolution in the Solomon Islands; conflicting “democracies” in customary and parliamentary governance in Samoa; Tongan constitutional reform; grassroots or top down approaches in overseas territories development aid?; the role of the military in post-colonial Fiji; and peace journalism in the South Pacific: a media and democracy frame in Timor-Leste and West Papua.

PROFESSOR DAVID ROBIE is director of the Pacific Media Centre in AUT’s School of Communication Studies and editor of the international peer reviewed journal Pacific Journalism Review. He holds a PhD in History/Politics (2004) from the University of the South Pacific, Fiji. He has lived and worked as an international journalist and media educator in seven countries for more than four decades.

In this professorial address, Professor David Robie reflects on the challenges in the context of the political economy of the media and journalism education in the Asia-Pacific region. He also explores emerging disciplines such as deliberative journalism, peace journalism, human rights journalism, and revisits notions of critical development journalism and citizen journalism.

In an issue devoted to the Leveson inquiry into Britain’s News of the World phone hacking scandal and the Finkelstein and Convergence reports on the Australian news industry, the research journal has questioned the “increasingly desperate” search for a business model.

“Is the new model the only answer to the current plight of journalism?” writes edition editor Dr Johan Lidberg from Monash University in Melbourne.

“Are media proprietors paying enough attention to the fact that the business model is built on the public trusting the journalistic practices that sit at the heart of the media brands?”

It is as important to retain public trust in journalism and to rebuild lost trust as the quest to make online journalism pay, Dr Lidberg writes.

“Indeed, without, or with low, public trust in news media, will online journalism ever pay enough to sustain quality journalism?” he asks.

One important tool to retain and rebuild trust in any professional practice is openness and accountability.

Ethical codes
“It is to achieve this that industries construct ethical codes of conduct to complement the existing legal framework.”

Along with the British and Australian media crises, the journal also examines NZ Law Commission proposals for media accountability reforms.

“The NZ media has not yet demonstrated anything like the excesses that have been the focus of the Leveson inquiry,” comments media law analyst Linda Clark.

“Which means the government can afford to sit back and watch what happens in the UK and in Australia. It can allow the broadcasters to experiment with an extra layer of self-regulation.”

Peering into a contaminated water well: The Solomon Islands report on sanitation and safety in the Solomon Islands. Pictured below: Joycely...

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